chevy

A tired 1990 Chevy Lumina isn’t the platform one would normally pick for a custom build. When you’re drag boat racing team on a budget though, you use what you can get cheap. Normally small boats are launched and landed using a trailer and tow vehicle. [Ashley Ruf’s] team at Little John’s racing is launching her boat “Kwitchabitchin” with a bit more style.

The team started by cutting the Lumina in half. Since the Chevy is a front wheel drive platform, everything behind the driver is more or less along for the ride. The gas tank was relocated, and notched to receive the front of the boat. The team then added a quad tire trailer frame. The frame is connected to the car with a long hydraulic cylinder. When the boat is being launched or landed, the cylinder can extend far enough to get the boat floating.

You might be thinking that there is no way this is street legal, and you’d be right. The Lumina only gets the boat into and out of the water. The boat is then pulled all the way forward using the hydraulics. The boat/car pair is a then perfect fit inside the team’s racing travel trailer.

The Chevrolet Volt is one of the top contenders in mass-market electric vehicles. Now you can get a look at the components that make up the electrical system with this Chevy Volt teardown article.

The adventure starts with a look at the 288 cell battery. It forms a T shape and takes up the space that forms the hump down the center of the interior of a vehicle. Theses have a liquid cooling system build into the enclosure to make sure things don’t get too hot during use or charging. The sights are then set on the control and monitoring hardware, and there’s a lot of it. In fact, the image above is an overview of the eighteen modules that pull the new plug-in EV technology together. If you’re brave enough to void the warranty on one of these, this should be a helpful road map to get you started.

Has anyone seen a teardown of the home charging station for one of these?

Winter’s coming, and you don’t want to be outdone by your neighbor’s new snow blower. We think it’s pretty safe to say you’ll be the envy of gearheads throughout the neighborhood if you can build your own snow blower around a V8 engine. [Kai Grundt] is a metal fabricator by day and a horror movie prop yard implement builder by night. He pulled the engine out of his Chevy truck and then filled in parts around it to make this 412 HP snow blower.

The tank treads that it rides are each have their own dedicated hydraulic pump, making it easy to drive and steer this 800 pound whale. One of the first orders of business for the beast was to throw snow from two houses away, burying his buddy’s car. That’s the price you pay for laughing in a guy’s face when he describes his next project. It sounds like [Kai] was planning on selling kits so you could more easily replicate the build, but we couldn’t find any additional info on that. If you’ve got the details, please let us know by leaving a comment.

[Dean Kamen]’s company, the people behind the Segway, have created a hybrid car that uses a Stirling engine instead of a standard internal combustion engine. Stirling engines are closed cycle, meaning heat is applied to the outside of the cylinder walls. They are generally more efficient than standard car engines, but haven’t been used much outside of industrial applications. We suspect that the drivetrain arrangement is similar to the Chevy Volt where the engine is used to charge batteries which are in turn driving an electric motor. This is different from modern hybrids that can have either electric motor or gas engine driving the wheels. The article is unfortunately full of classic [Kamen] hyperbole and minimal detail. He calls the Stirling engine “an insurance policy” for the electric car since it can recharge the battery. That’s right, folks. If you run out of juice, you can put gas in the car. I doubt many Prius owners will fall out of their chair over that. Being a Stirling engine, we’d be more impressed if you could charge the thing by rubbing warm toast on it.